Bite your tongue, it's the August 24 crossword

[Thomps2525]

As a child, Freddie Cheng loved to work crossword puzzles. He eventually decided to start creating his own. His first published crossword appeared in the New York Times on July 12, 2010. His puzzles also appear in the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. His crossword today includes these theme answers:

Sci-fi fleet leader: MOTHERSHIP
Perceptive person: SHARPCOOKIE
Indigenous US people: NATIVEAMERICANS
Uncontrollable person: LOOSECANNON

"At a loss for words" and what the starts of those answers can literally be: TONGUETIED. That gives us "mother tongue," "sharp tongue," "native tongue" and "loose tongue."

Cheng includes six brand names, which used to be taboo in crosswords: EVIAN ("Aquafina competitor"), NANOS ("Old iPods"), TESLA ("Cybertruck maker"),  AMAZONECHO ("Smart speaker brand"), KISS ("Hershey's foil-wrapped chocolate treat") and AVON ("Door-to-door cosmetics seller").

During summer vacation in 1877, 19-year-old David McConnell took a job as a door-to-door book salesman for Union Publishing House of New York. He continued to work for the company and in 1887, with the financial backing of a friend, bought Union Publishing for $600. A year earlier, McConnell had started a perfume company. When women bought books from him, he gave them fragrance samples and they seemed to like the perfume more than they liked the books. McConnell recruited several women to be sales representatives. What was initially known as the California Perfume Company was renamed Avon Products Inc in 1932. Here is a biography of Persis Foster Eames Albee, the first "Avon lady." In 1997, Avon teamed with Mattel to issue a special edition Persis Foster Eames Albee Barbie doll.

https://peoplepill.com/people/persis-foster-eames-albee

The crossword includes the overused words ALES, AREA, NEE and ONE. It also includes SAIL. The clue is "Yacht propeller" – but the sail does not propel the yacht. It is the wind blowing against  the sail that propels the yacht.

"Only singer to have a #1 hit in six straight decades (1980s-2010s)" is CHER. Well.....yes, if you consider three different charts. I Got You Babe, her duet with then-husband Sonny Bono, was number one on the Billboard  Hot 100 for three weeks in August 1965. Cher topped the chart again with Gypsies Tramps & Thieves in 1971, Half Breed in 1973, Dark Lady in 1974 and Believe in 1999. Cher's duet with Peter Cetera, After All, and her solo hit If I Could Turn Back Time went to number one on the adult contemporary chart in 1989. And she had five number one songs on the dance chart: Song For The Lonely and A Different Kind Of Love Song in 2002, When The Money's Gone/Love One Another in 2003, You Haven't Seen The Last Of Me in 2010 and Woman's World in 2013. Can she reach number one again in the 2020s? I wouldn't count her out. In 2020, her Spanish-language version of ABBA's Chiquitita got to #2 on the Latin pop digital songs chart. Here is her latest single, Walls released in May 2021.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qbpudj6cGY

I could say I just wanted to cher that song – but when a pun is that easy and that obvious, it's not worth making.

Or did I just make it anyway?